What router for under $50?

Well, preferably, I would like it to be under $40... but anyways....

There's a lot of routers to pick from; however, it seems like you take a lot of risks in getting one that actually works right and lasts. Can someone offer recommendations that meet the following criteria? Purchasing from the following locations should be acceptable in some cases:
online: pricegrabber.com listed stores
local: best buy, circuit city, office depot

What I'm looking for:
* Wired router only; no wireless (edit: this was added)
* 10/100 ethernet router with a minimum of 2 ports and 1 wan/internet port
* some basic firewall
* important that it does not cause any decrease in performance
* important that it lasts several years
* important that it doesn't have consistant problems where you have to keep resetting it to make it work; and in the same regards that it also works fine if you power it down a lot.

The last three items are the most important, yet they seem to be issues with a lot of routers out there. Unfortunately, there is no spec that you can look at to find out this.

Ooops, forgot to mention that I would prefer non-wireless. Sorry Grumpy9117. I updated the first post the reflect that.


Regarding brands, it seems that even among the same brand like D-Link, Lynksys, and Netgear that not all models are very good (some models have issues).

I didn't want the security risk of wireless. Also, I would probably want to go for the 100+Mbps ones if I chose wireless; I did look into it a little based on your reply. In the end, I put in an order for the Airlink101 AR504 based on the favorable testing done by tomshardware.